I would like to come back on a few comments made on the Economic Note I published on monday: "Bringing back tolls on Quebec highways".

On of them is that it would be more efficient and easy to increase the gaz tax to maintain the highway network (Henri Aubin, The Gazette among others). That proposition doesn't make sense politically. Increasing the gaz tax has been done in the 1980's with the desastrous results we now have: revenues has been used to finance all governmental missions, except maintaining roads it seems.

It does not make sens economically either. The gaz tax is a Pigou's tax on carbon: it is aimed to reduce greenhouse gazes. Its revenus should be used exclusively to compensate greenhouse gazes produced by cars. Tolls are a user fee charged to finance a service we receive. In addition, they are a good congestion relief charge and are often used to reduce traffic. Then gaz tax and tolls: two means to attain two very different goals. I reached the conclusion that we should reduce the gaz tax to make it equivalent to the value of compensating greenhouse gazes (about 350 million $ in comparison with revenus of more than 1 billion $) and increase tolls.

Another arugment was that tolls would a) increase bureaucracy and be costly and b) be diverted from road maintenance and used to finance any other governemental mission (Jean J. Samson, Le Journal de Québec among others). Those who read the study noticed that it took into account those two objections. First, the gross revenus from tolling has been reduced by 15 % to take into account perception costs and by another 5 % to take into account payment default. Then, the 1.6 billion revenu generated by tolls is a net revenu, not a gross revenus. Also, we proposed to bring back tolls in a PPP scheme to prevent the government from taking the new money and divert it from roads.